Before I Sleep (Tommy Shelby x OC)
by BehindTheWardrobe
Summary: Louisa Sharp and Thomas Shelby's lives are intertwined; as if bound by ribbon, they always find their way back to one another, be it on the battlefield or at home. Some loves were made to last.
1. PART ONE

PART ONE

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

[The Snow Man - Wallace Stevens]


	2. Chapter One

"All hands on deck!" the matron shrieked as a new wave of broken men swarmed into the field hospital on stretchers. The canvas material of the tent billowed as it was disrupted by an onslaught of movement. The prevailing northern wind didn't help, either.

It was almost midnight, and Louisa Sharp, though laid in bed, had not been sleeping. She could feel the cold seeping into her bones, turning her fingers and toes into numb stubs over which she had little control. Beneath the thin, scratchy blanket of her bed, she shivered.

"Sharp, Banks, Anderson!"

Louisa sat up abruptly at the Matron's second call. She rubbed her eyes, which although were not clogged with sleep, were instead made heavy by the weight of the things she had seen. Sights she had never imagined – and knew she would never forget.

Her best friend, Marie Banks, also stirred from her fitful rest. The girls didn't exchange words; they didn't need to. They barely had time to throw on their clothes, or pull on white aprons, before even more of the wounded were charged with their care.

"What happened?" Louisa asked as she caught up with the matron.

"Enemy fire caused another tunnel collapse."

She swallowed hard. "How many…?"

"Three died before we got to them."

"And the rest?" Everyone knew that tunnelling was the most dangerous of all stations to hold. The thought of sodden earth, hot and close, made Louisa's breath quicken.

Matron's thin lips pinched together. "We'll do what we can."

Louisa knew that it was all they _could_ do. But somehow she also knew that for many, it would never be enough.

She split with matron and chose a stretcher which seemed to have been abandoned by everybody else. All around, wounded men's cries rang up into the air as nurses furiously fought to save them; from this man, who lay still, there was no sound.

As she drew closer, Louisa could see exactly why this soldier had been presumed dead. In the field hospital, snap-decisions had to be made almost constantly, and they often included prioritising those who had a high chance of survival. From a distance, it seemed as though for this young man it was too late.

But Louisa couldn't help it. Something drew her to the still and blackened body, something pushed her to go and check. She couldn't explain it, but she had a feeling. Almost a tug in her stomach, be it from guilt or something else. During her training, she'd always been chastised for being too soft, for stretching her resources to breaking point. She couldn't leave anyone behind. She couldn't leave a man to die no matter how battered or broken he may be.

"Sir?" she called gently, approaching the stretcher. It had been abandoned at the back of the hospital on the floor, meters away from any occupied beds.

Louisa knelt down when no sound came from the soldier. Immediately she could smell the damp earth that covered his body, wet clay and soil clinging to him like he had been dragged from a grave. She brought her ear close to his lips, closed her eyes, and waited for the familiar sound of breath being drawn, of air whispering against her skin.

She heard nothing.

As she reached for his left arm she felt her own heart rate increasing. The sleeve of his dark green uniform had been torn; threads dangled past his fingertips, soaked red with blood. She pulled the fabric back hurriedly, probing the delicate skin of the soldier's inner wrist in search of a pulse.

Louisa took a breath and waited…

There. Barely detectable, a faint beat surged under the pad of her finger. It was slow and erratic, but there. He was alive.

Without looking away from the soldier's dirt-streaked face, she called over her shoulder, "I need some help over here!"

Louisa quickly took to unfastening the soldier's shirt, brushing away the clumps of dirt that clung to every part of him. He looked as though he had been fossilised; trapped beneath the earth for thousands of years. It was hard to believe that his heart was still beating – but Louisa knew if she didn't act quickly it wouldn't be for much longer.

A tunnel collapse meant many things: Oxygen starvation, crushed bones, burns from shell explosions. Any of those afflictions could have been diagnosed to her soldier, but Louisa knew something much more urgent needed her attention…the bullet wound in the man's chest.

"Oh, _god_ ," she breathed heavily under the weight of his torso. She needed to prop him up to remove his shirt, but with only her meagre strength to rely on the task was nothing less than gargantuan.

Stealing a glance over her shoulder, Louisa hoped to see another nurse rushing over. She saw no one. Nobody had so much as noticed her soldier, lying limp on the floor. Nobody had heard her call for help.

"It's just me and you, tommy," she told the man as though he could hear her. Calling him by a soldier's nickname was surely better than calling him no name at all. "I'll be back in just a moment, I promise."

Few things could be promised during the war. Louisa took great pleasure in the small vows she could lend broken men. After all, there had to be something certain left in the world, didn't there? Looking at the chaos and suffering which surrounded her, she wasn't so sure.

Despite being hesitant about leaving her tommy's side, Louisa knew that she needed to gather supplies if she was going to save him. Her hand brushed his blood-stained one briefly, surprised by the warmth of his skin, before she pushed up from her knees and located the closest supply store. When she arrived there, heart pumping double time, the matron was just leaving with her arms full.

"Matron-" Louisa began, about to ask for help, but she was abruptly cut off.

"Leave him."

She frowned, throwing open the lid of a box of gauze. "Excuse me?"

"The soldier on the floor at the back. He was at the front of the line, he's as good as gone." A roll of bandages toppled from the pile in the matron's arms and Louisa bent down to pick it up. As she handed it back, the old woman raised a brow. "You have to _prioritise_ , Miss Sharp."

"But he's alive."

"Not for long. And even if by the Lord's miracle he did survive, his brain would be scrambled. He'll never really leave the battlefield. Now do something useful!"

The matron rushed off at last, leaving Louisa stood at the supply store with a heavy heart. It was almost as if the blood in her veins had turned to ice. Being only seventeen, many people Louisa encountered assumed that her heart was too big, and she too naïve to understand the sacrifices that war required. But Louisa resented those people. She might have been young, but she knew precisely just how much was at stake; how much people put on the line for king and country.

Her tommy's sacrifice in fighting was no less than any other man's sacrifice…why should his life, although fading, be of any less worth? Louisa shook her head in defiance and finished collecting what she would need for her own battle.

War wasn't just waged on the battlefield, after all. It was waged every single day in every single field hospital, women and men fighting against the biggest enemy of all: death.

"You're a fighter," Louisa cooed to her soldier as she knelt down beside him again. She took a pair of scissors and began cutting away at his torn shirt. "A bloody good one, too, by the looks of it," she noted the medal clipped to his breast pocket, just an inch away from the bullet wound. "Fight this one last battle for me, eh?"

Somewhere deep down in his unconscious state, Thomas Shelby, hardly alive, heard a voice. A sweet voice, like the tinkling sound of water bells. He did not know what the voice said, or even if it was anything more than a figment of his shattered mind. All that mattered was that he heard it. And it made him keep breathing.

"I'm going to leave the bullet in," Louisa mumbled nervously as she swabbed antiseptic on the wound. Her fingers shook despite the fact that she had seen similar injuries thousands of times. This time felt different. This life felt somehow more precious; it was hers and hers alone to save.

Her tommy had been lucky, she noted. Or as lucky as a man in the tunnels could be; the bullet had hit a safe zone near his shoulder. It hadn't caused any serious damage on entry, and the chances were that leaving it alone would be safer than removing it. Enough blood had already been spilled for today.

Once she had finished stitching up her soldier's bullet wound, she began work on the rest of him. Louisa suspected one or two of his ribs may have been broken, but there was little she could do about that except thank God that they hadn't ruptured his lungs. She ran her hands up his arms, feeling for any obvious breaks or fractures, conscious of the hard, sinuous muscles which bulged beneath her fingers. All clear.

The final area that remained was her tommy's face – the one place she had, without realising, been avoiding. There was something desperately haunting about his gaunt cheeks, and the way the earth clung to them as if they had already begun to decay. His eyes were presumably closed, though layer of dirt which was smeared across them made it hard to tell. His full lips were parted slightly, permitting shallow breaths despite the mud that had found its way past them.

Louisa once again pushed up from her crouching position, going in search of some hot water and a cloth. The field hospital was in a state of disarray. She had been working here for almost four months, yet never had so many limp bodies been ferried inside, never had so many concerned frowns turned the faces of the nurses bitter. It was like a mad house. She had to shoulder past her work mates, elbow and jostle through the middle of the tent, ignoring the mournful moans of pain which permeated the tense air.

By the time Louisa returned to her soldier she feared it might have been too late. Marie caught her elbow on the way back, whispering a quick, "we'll get through this" before rushing off elsewhere. That phrase became a mantra in her head – one that she couldn't help but repeat out loud as she wrung out her cloth and leaned over.

"We'll get through this." She pressed the damp cloth to her tommy's forehead gently. "You'll get through this."

As Louisa ran the cloth down the side of the soldier's face, easing the clumps of dirt away, his humanity slowly came back to him. Mud stained water trickled onto the floor beside his body, yet the glistening moisture revealed beneath it warm, pale skin. Gashes and scratches marred it in places, but even the worst swelling of the man's left eye did not take back, to Louisa's surprise, his handsome looks. Once the worst of the dirt had been washed away, the cloth was replaced by her own fingers, tracing sharp cheekbones and following the lines of his lips. There was something startling about the complete transformation that seemed to have taken place; it was not attraction which captivated the young nurse's fascination, but instead it was something between awe and fear. She feared that someone who looked so lifeless, almost like a corpse, managed to be so very alive beneath the blood and mud and dirt.

That her tommy's heart was still beating was testament to his strength, yet Louisa was chilled by the thought of those who were not so lucky. Those who suffocated to death with earth stuffed in their mouths blocking out their screams.

With a shudder she drew up taller, leaning back to overview her work. The bullet wound had, by now, slowed in its bleeding and her soldier's breathing had become more steady. If she paused, she could hear it wheezing through his lungs, could see his chest rising and falling. His eyes were closed, a fan of thick, dark lashes casting shadows under them, yet even in such a peaceful, still state her tommy looked alive. She knew she needed to get some fluids into him, she knew they were still on tentative ground, but he looked alive. That was a small victory.

Still shaking, Louisa reached out tentatively and took his hand in hers.

Outside the field hospital, the first winter's snow began to fall.


	3. Chapter Two

It was cold and dark in the field hospital. The canvas material of the tent billowed in and out with the breeze, each new draught making Louisa shiver. The thin covers over her body did little to stave out the cold; even so, she didn't think she would have been able to sleep anyway.

Not with her tommy in the other room.

It had been four days since the influx of broken men had pushed them all to their limits. Resources were thin, and nurses even thinner—it was hard to find time to eat when your work was never done. In a way, Louisa liked the hunger. It helped her stay awake, the hollowness in her stomach so empty that it hurt. It felt right, somehow, that among so much suffering, she should bear the burden too.

Mostly, she just wanted to see the tommy who slept only a few hundred feet away.

For the past four nights she had visited him in secret, cloaked by the cover of darkness as everyone around her slept. Some of the wounded soldiers were awake, though—she could hear them tossing and turning, could hear their groans of discomfort and pain—but Louisa knew her way around well enough to walk without a lamp. She was like a silent ghost passing between them, undisturbed and unnoticed.

Every night she waited, counting on her shaking hands the number of night-shifts, watching the flickering shadows of nurses who patrolled the beds by lamp-light. Eventually they would retire to bed too, the hours of the morning too small to continue, and that was when Louisa knew it was safe to move.

The best days, though, were the ones when her shift came up on the rota. During the day, she had to divide her time up equally between those men charged with her care—she was too busy fixing emergency situations to spare a second for her silent, unmoving tommy. At night, things changed.

She rose from her make-shift bed, still fully clothed, and took the lamp from the nurse whose shift had just ended. Her name was Leah, a pretty girl of nineteen with a dark bob of hair to frame her hollow-looking features. In the flickering light from the lamp, her usually beautiful cheekbones cast dark shadows down her face, matching the circles that curved beneath her eyes.

"Have a good shift," she whispered as she passed the lamp to Louisa, their cold hands touching momentarily. Both noticed the exhaustion mirrored back at them as they exchanged thin smiles.

"Get some sleep," Louisa replied softly, tilting her head in the direction of the beds behind her. "God knows we all need it."

When she was finally alone in the hospital tent, she let out a long, deep breath. As much as the prospect of seeing her tommy kept her going, the truth of her words still hung heavily on her shoulders. How long had it been since she'd had the luxury of sleep? Louisa's eyes felt heavy, swollen and flagging just like the rest of her body.

Still, she knew that her exhaustion was nothing compared to the suffering these soldiers faced. Nothing compared to their pain; the sound of men's screams was something she was sure would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.

Louisa worked her way around the room slowly, meticulously, making sure each soldier was as comfortable as he could be. Some of them were awake, kept up by the pain of their injuries, so she sang to them softly when they asked, wiping the sweat off their foreheads with a damp cloth.

Some of them would wake horribly. They would jolt up suddenly, with a great gasp as though their lungs had been starved of air for an age. That ghastly sound wasn't what bothered Louisa the most, however. Instead, it was the look on their faces—the sheer terror of certain death, expressions mauled beyond recognition by panic. She didn't what to think about what they saw, in those dreams. She didn't want to think that for any of them—but especially her tommy—those dreams had once been reality.

Once she reached the back of the tent, Louisa could feel herself growing anxious. Her heart beat just a little faster, palms prickled with a hint of slick perspiration. She adjusted her grip on the lamp and swallowed, closing the distance between herself and the tommy she had saved four days ago.

Well, _saved_ was an optimistic choice of words, she thought. Ninety six hours had passed since he arrived at the hospital, and not a single one of those had been spent conscious. Louisa was beginning to worry he would never wake up. Physically, he appeared fine. A little thin, perhaps, and battered, but he wasn't losing any more blood. The problem was that injuries could run deeper than outward appearances. His body might have been physically find, but his mind...

The matron's words repeated in Louisa's head. _He'll never really leave the battlefield..._

She knelt down by her tommy's stretcher, setting the lamp on the floor beside her so that it threw long shadows against the far wall of the tent.

"Are you warm enough?" she whispered quietly, reaching out to touch his hollow cheek with the back of her hand. Somehow it felt wrong to be touching him, when he was so far away in a dream land. It felt wrong that her heart skipped at the feel of his skin, cool and pale though it was.

The matron hadn't deemed Louisa's soldier worthy of a hospital bed, given the unlikelihood of his recovery, and so he had been relegated to a quiet spot in the corner of the tent where the breeze blew in beneath the canvas. Louisa had salvaged what blankets she could, even sacrificing one of her own. The soldier's skin was still cool against her touch, but as she held her fingers above his parted lips, the warmth of his slow breath spread over her palm.

She smiled in response to the sensation. "You're still fighting," she observed proudly. "You're still with us."

When another breath washed over her outstretched palm, Louisa sat back and placed her hands in her lap, watching the rise and fall of this strange man's chest. Her eyes flickered between his face and his hands, desperate for some sign that he might wake up. Desperate for some sign he could hear her whispered conversations.

All she got in response was that steady spread of warmth over her palm with each of his exhales.

"Sometimes I almost envy you your sleep," she admitted sheepishly, rearranging his blankets for something to do with her hands. She felt that she was perhaps making up for his lack of movement with her own excessive fidgeting; as if she might somehow will him to absorb some of her energy.

The soldier slept on.

The snow outside lay deeper.

Louisa would find no more god-given signs that night. She checked her watch by the light of the lamp, sighed, and replaced it in her pocket where she kept it out of harm's way. Her shift was almost over—her time with the soldier was growing short.

Suddenly gripped by a sense of urgency that choked her, she couldn't help but plead, "come back to us, tommy. Come back to me."

It was a strange thing, to feel so connected to this man with whom she had exchanged less than a word. Yet it was something she did feel. When Louisa's eyes traced his face, that sleeping expression of suspended anxiety, the youth hidden just beneath, a strange feeling of _knowing_ gripped her.

It felt as though she had known him her whole life.

And somewhere, deep in his unconscious nightmares, Thomas Shelby felt the same tug. Her whispered voice, softer than a swathe of silk, called to him. He chased it, fought to reach it, fought against the violent explosions of blood and gunpowder and mud and human bodies in his mind. Fought against the heat of the tunnels, against the sores on his hands and feet, the ache in his back, the fear in his chest.

He just wasn't ready to reach it quite yet.

"Sleep soundly," Louisa cooed, reaching for the lamp as she stood up. "And wake soon."

She paused for a brief moment, observing his profile caught in the yellow glow. She wished and willed for some sort of change—a twitch, a blink, a flicker of life—but nothing came. The firm line of his lips didn't alter, nor the fan of lashes swept above the bone of his cheek.

"You'll get there," she promised him fiercely, nodding to herself.

"Talking to him again?" A voice startled Louisa so that she stumbled back and almost dropped the lamp. It was Marie, her closest friend, come to take over the night-shift.

She turned and held the lamp up to illuminate her best friend's face, still beautiful despite the haunting quality of the yellow light. Beautifully exhausted.

Louisa cleared her throat. "Just trying to wake him," she explained, doing her best to sound nonchalant despite the pink burn of her ice cold cheeks.

Marie's plump lips fell into a soft smile—the sort that reminded Louisa of home. "Sure," she agreed amiably, yet the teasing cadence of voice told a story of amused disbelief.

Louisa handed the lamp over. "Have a good shift." She turned to go, wishing she could sneak one last glance at her tommy, but with her best friend watching she knew it was better to retreat.

As she reached the doorway between the two sections of the tent, Marie's voice called her back.

"What is it about him, Lou?"

Louisa froze, but didn't turn around.

"About him in particular, I mean?" her friend clarified. Nothing more needed to be said; they both knew of the strange obsession she was referring to.

"I..." Louisa tried, then faltered. Slowly, she turned, so that she could see her friend like an illuminated angel a few feet away. She tried out different answers in her head, but could bring herself to say none but the truth. "I feel like I've known him," she said quietly. "Like I've known him for a very long time."

Through the dim light, she could just make out the faint curve of Marie's frown. It wasn't an angry or confused frown, just a disbelieving one. "But you haven't met him before?" she pressed.

Louisa shook her head. "Not that I can recall. And I _would_ recall, if I had." Of this last part she was certain.

"Maybe in another life, then," Marie suggested wistfully. They were both conscious of time ticking on.

"I don't believe in past lives," Louisa admitted almost self consciously, glancing down to her worn shoes. She felt guilty, sometimes, that surrounded by constant death her beliefs were so final and unflinching.

"And I didn't believe in ghosts," Marie replied, her voice dropping by a few degrees, "it doesn't mean they don't exist. We've seen them in the eyes of these men. Ghosts walk among us on this earth every day."

When Louisa said nothing, her friend continued.

"Maybe past lives aren't a million miles away after all."


End file.
